MINE EQUAL 



m 



3 jlflan jWtne Cnuat 



A Man Mine Equal 



BY 

E. K. STOKELY 




BOSTON 
ATLANTIC PRINTING COMPANY 
179 South Street 
1912 



^A* 



Copyright, 1912 
By the Author 



)CI.A346096 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 

THIS is a story of things 
as they are. If you are 
squeamish, or happen to 
be one of those persons who pre- 
fer to look upon the fair shiny 
surface of life, without ever car- 
ing to turn the pattern to judge 
whether the ugly threads of the 
warp and woof are staunch and 
firm or slippery and rotten, if 
the truths of life offend you, then 
j this story is not for you. 

I am not in any sense a story — 
teller, but no matter how tongue- 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



tied a man may be, if certain 
episodes come into his life, great 
waves of experiences that carry 
him high on their crests, his 
tongue is loosened and he tells 
his story. And in this way I am 
telling mine. 

I must go back to a day in late 
November, fifteen years ago, for 
the beginning. I was at my desk 
cutting the edges of a budget of 
letters the afternoon mail had 
brought in, — straight business 
letters, cheery personal letters, 
whining letters from men who 
were down and getting the worst 
of it, — the usual run of mail 
with an occasional blue or yellow 
cheque sifting out of its envelope 
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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



to liven matters up. In the outer 
office I could see Carter's back 
bent over his books, his long legs 
wrapped round the high stool 
only releasing their grip as he 
moved to answer the insistent 
demands of the telephone. Back 
in the library under the lights a 
dozen men were reading the 
evening papers which had just 
come in, and the constant swing- 
ing of the outside door admitted 
draughts of frosty air charged 
with the first snowflakes, the 
rumble and roar of the elevated 
overhead, and more men, singly 
and in groups, pouring in from 
the great arteries of the city, who 

with nods of greeting, tramped 
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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



upstairs or downstairs or resolved 
themselves into other places in 
the rooms about, doubly warm 
and cheerful by contrast with the 
coming night. 

It is strange how an incident 
and its setting can stand so sil- 
houetted in a man's mind after so 
many years. A drawn game of 
checkers was just beingconcluded 
in the game-room, surrounded 
by an absorbed little knot of men. 
Upstairs a gathering of Grand 
Army men were renewing old 
times and warming up their blood 
with songs of the 60's which 
united oddly with the noise of a 
convention of railroad engineers 
which was breaking up in the 

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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



next room. Carter had wearily 
unwrapped his legs to respond to 
the telephone yet another time, 
when into this great hive of men's 
social and industrial activities was 
projected a strangely forlorn fig- 
ure, — a boy, undersized for four- 
teen, pinched with cold and 
shivering in his buttonless coat, 
but with a look in his eyes and a 
something in his face that riveted 
my attention, reluctantly, indeed, 
but none the less firmly. 

To know Joseph Buest as I 
then saw him for the first time I 
would digress from my story long 
enough to take you into one of 
Boston's narrow streets, into one 
of those tenement districts that 

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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



overflow with a crowding human- 
ity ; a humanity that, caught be- 
tween the inexorable millstones 
of environment and heredity, 
plays its part in no different 
measure than perhaps might you 
or I had our lots in life been cast 
on the same stage. 

In one of the squalid basements 
that peer upward into this squalid 
street there lived at that time a 
man named Martin Buest, a 
maker of shoes. He made good 
shoes when he was not drunk. 
It was his only excuse for living, 
for look as you might, not another 
virtue of craft or character had 
Martin Buest. He beat his wife 
in his lordly moods; he beat his 

14 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



children impartially, not so much 
for given offense as for the up- 
holding of the time-honored 
principle of parental authority; 
he starved and browbeat and in- 
timidated them all; and at long 
intervals he made shoes. 

Now though Martin Buest an- 
nounced to the world in letters 
of charcoal on a pine shingle that 
his were high class goods for high 
class trade, either the high class 
trade of the street did not believe 
him, or else it preferred the al- 
luring factoryoutput of the down- 
town districts. So what with poor 
trade and more and more fre- 
quent intervals of drinking, the 
fortunes of the Buest family were 

15 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



indeed at low ebb, till Mrs. Buest, 
in her own sober moments, took 
to the scrubbing of stores and the 
children scattered like deserted 
cats for a personal solution of the 
problem of holding soul and body 
together. Thus it was that Joe, 
the eldest, then about fourteen, 
came into the Wells Memorial 
Institute that evening in Novem- 
ber and stood at my desk, the 
forlornest, raggedest, manliest, 
most sensitized little specimen of 
boyhood that ever grew in a 
human muck heap. But they 
were a man's eyes that looked at 
me ; and behind them was a 
man's soul, asking, pleading, 
agonizing, demanding its human 

16 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



birthright of cleanliness, respect- 
ability, opportunity, through the 
medium of work ! 

I never got a message straight- 
er, — not from the boy's lips so 
much as from what his eyes told 
me. But I temporized by telling 
him we needed no office boy, 
which was true, and then began 
studying his face and watching 
the man's courage after a moment 
supplant the boy's despair. I 
noticed the involuntary grip of 
the hands (washed as clean as 
circumstances would permit), 
the tightening of a mouth that 
showed none of the usual sag 
which is the birthright of the 
slum child from a long line of ill- 

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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



conditioned forbears. He hesi- 
tated a moment, opened his 
mouth to speak, then, his judg- 
ment dominating his purpose, he 
was withdrawing quietly when I 
surprised myself by opening up 
a new line of industries and hir- 
ing him on the spot. I wanted a 
boy — well, for many things. 
His first errand was to take a note 
to my wife out in Brookline (we 
had the telephone) and next 
morning to anticipate my laundry 
man's weekly call by personally 
conducting my shirts to the laun- 
dry, a mile away. I had the con- 
science, of course, to pay him 
out of my own pocket while I 
held him in storage, as it were, 

18 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



and it was a good investment al- 
most from the very start. Inside of 
three weeks he was installed gen- 
eral office boy, and our troubles 
along this line were for a long 
time at an end. 

The boy in his relations to his 
work was a marvel of faithfulness, 
alertness, willingness. That mol- 
lified me, but it was something 
more that attracted me. It was 
the steadfastness of purpose back 
of it all. He was old for his 
years — old as Methuselah — and 
his meager pay envelope was 
emptied entire every Saturday 
night into the wretched house- 
hold chasm that yawned ever 
between the cruel precipices of 

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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



demand and supply. But with 
his first raise of wages he began 
putting the increase into our 
Workingmen's Savings Bank, 
wisely, I judged, refraining from 
mentioning the withholdings at 
home; and I knew then cer- 
tainly what I had suspected be- 
fore, that no accident of birth or 
circumstance could arrest this 
boy's moral growth toward higher 
things. Against the scale of pov- 
erty, slothfulness, ignorance, 
drunkenness, he was placing the 
ego of an individual soul, ac- 
knowledging no claims of past 
heritage, sweeping aside the cir- 
cumstantial evidence of the pres- 
ent, — and the scale was begin- 
ning to move ! 

20 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



Our workingmen's classes were 
then, as they are now, a mighty 
force in helping up those who 
were striving to better prepare 
and strengthen themselves for the 
battle of life. Joe's education 
had terminated somewhere in the 
middle grades of the grammar 
school, and our Institute age re- 
striction of eighteen years placed 
him outside the pale — apparently. 
Have you ever seen a hungry 
dog eyeing his master's table? 
Have you ever watched him lick 
up the crumbs fallen from the 
deserted board? That was Joe. 
He absorbed learning from the 
talk of the men, garnering it all 
in and threshing it out for him- 

21 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



self afterwards; he studied it 
out between the janitor services 
he eagerly performed in their 
class rooms; he haunted their 
library and reading room; his 
ears were ever within hearing 
distance in all their debates. He 
grew and expanded at a tremen- 
dous pace ; but always he was 
the faithful servant, never pre- 
suming upon his humble privi- 
leges, obedient, respectful, un- 
tiring; and one thing more- 
loving ! 

Perhaps you have already sus- 
pected it, and would smile at the 
incongruous friendship that had 
grown up between us, he a mere 

boy of the streets, I the business 
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A MAN MINE EQUAL 



manager of the Wells Memorial 
Institute of Boston, with my 
place in the world of men. I 
had been a married man ten 
years, but no children had come 
into our home. I would have 
adopted Joe without hesitation, 
but I felt instinctively I was too 
little to do it. He was not the 
boy who could be adopted. He 
was not content with lifting him- 
self, God help him, — he was try- 
ing to lift the sodden creatures at 
home whom he called father and 
mother, the wayward pretty little 
sister, the rough brothers with 
whom he lived and slept and ate 
and shared, for whom he worked 
first and last with at least a par- 

23 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



tial understanding of the fearful 
odds against him. 

I had been to his home on one 
or two occasions, but the condi- 
tions there of drunkenness and 
wretched poverty so repelled me 
that, in spite of myself, I was 
obliged to become acquainted 
with the boy anew each time to 
reassure myself that fate had 
hurled a seed of promise into 
that rotton soil. In turn, my 
visits so shamed the boy that for 
days he could not raise his eyes 
to my face, and his usual frank 
manner became painfully con- 
strained. But after thinking the 
matter over, deliberately, like a 
good surgeon, I began pressing 

24 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



the wound. I spoke caustically 
of his brothers' evil street ways, 
of his father's irresponsible — and 
indeed criminal — attitude toward 
life. More delicately, of course, 
I hinted at the mother's weak- 
nesses and discussed his sister's 
chances for the future. Slowly 
and painfully the boy's reticence 
gave way and he began to find 
comfort in talking to me. 



The seasons had slipped away 
till I counted back six years that 
Joe had been with us. From 
office boy he had climbed into 
Carter's place on the tall stool, — 
Carter had gone out to Iowa to 

25 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



farm, — and in this, as in the in- 
termediate positions he had occu- 
pied, he was the same capable, 
hardworking fellow, with the 
same wistful look in his eyes and 
the same strong purpose in his 
young heart, — regeneration, com- 
plete regeneration, — not for him- 
self alone but for his blood, for 
every member of his family, to 
the last. I knew these six years 
had brought some degree of 
physical comfort into the home, 
that one star of hope had risen 
and shone above the dark rim of 
the home horizon, and that was 
Joe. While the younger brothers 
did not care to emulate him, they 
respected him. The mother kept 

26 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



the home in better condition, 
with a degree of cheerfulness. 
The sister loved him, for she 
knew almost her only words of 
kindness from his lips. The 
shoemaker began, over his cups, 
to allude boastfully to his eldest 
son and what paternal sacrifice 
had done for him, — a lie, if you 
will, but in it a meed of appreci- 
ation and a faint stirring of pride. 
Joe worshipped his sister Mar- 
tha, who was nineteen now, one 
year his junior ; a vain, pretty 
little thing who shrank at her 
mother's voice and the shoemak- 
er's blasphemies, and who, like 
other girls of her condition, was 
beginning to find the street world 

27 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



attractive. She worked at a rib- 
bon counter in one of the big 
stores on Washington Street and 
invariably her companions walked 
home with her as far as the street 
corner, — "the girls" or some of 
"the boys" of her acquaintance, 
and once the floor walker of 
her department. They said pleas- 
ant things to her; they praised 
her looks, sympathized with her 
troubles and joined in her laugh- 
ter. Nobody was kind to her at 
home! She was met with abuse 
and even blows. They called her 
lazy and said she wasn't worth 
her salt and begrudged her things 
to wear! Her brothers were 
rough, dirty, noisy. Joey was a 

28 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



dear, to be sure, but he was a boy, 
too, and couldn't understand. 

She began out of working hours 
to seek the cheap substitutes for 
a happy girlhood, — ten-cent the- 
atres, inane literature that held 
cheap romance ever before her 
eyes, the public dance halls. 
And then one day, when she was 
barely twenty, she ended it all by 
running away with a coarse mid- 
dle-aged vaudeville actor who 
already had a family of a wife and 
several children. 

It was then that Joe became a 
man at a single bound. He came 
to me pale and shaken and quite 
unable to discuss the matter ex- 
cept to say that he was leaving us. 

29 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



His Martha, — his little sister, — 
whom he had hoped some day 
to place beyond discomfort and 
want! He must find her, of 
course, and he must earn more 
money to do it. The Institute 
had done everything for him, — 
it had given him education, 
strengthened his mind and pur- 
pose and advanced his earnings; 
but he must leave us now. He 
was taking a civil service exami- 
nation for which the Institute had 
particularly fitted him, for the 
railway mail service. He would 
pass it, — there was no such word 
as fail, — and then he would find 
her! And this had opened his 
eyes to the future of the others. 

30 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



They needed help now or it 
would be too late. He must have 
more money. 

With my hand in his, and with- 
out speaking a word except "God 
bless you," I pledged him my 
help in it all, — the strong uplift- 
ing arm of the Institute and its 
opportunities for industrial and 
liberal education for his brothers 
as they came eighteen, a surveil- 
lance on the home, such aid as I 
could give in the finding of the 
sister. And he went from us. 

It was uphill work I can tell 
you. The brothers were irregu- 
larly at work and in the intervals 
were disposed, young as they 
were, to seek the downward path. 

31 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



The shoemaker sank daily deeper 
in his cups. But in the mother, 
weak creature though she was, 
there seemed to begin a slow 
birth of better things through the 
pain of her daughter's fate. With 
the awful uncertainty of it her 
mother heart stirred to life, and 
now drowned in tears, now ac- 
cusing herself with bitterness and 
self-reproach, sobered and peni- 
tent, she became a strengthened 
tie which held the household 
together. 



That is old Martin sitting there 
playing checkers in our smoking 
room, a place where our old men 

32 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



love to congregate. But he has 
a right to be there, mind you; no 
bums or idlers around here, or 
drunkards either. Every man 
among them earns or has earned 
the right to be there through the 
honest title of workingman; and 
Martin still makes good shoes, in 
spite of his age and rheumatism, 
and lets liquor alone. But I am 
anticipating my story. 

Joe passed his civil service ex- 
amination and got a railway postal 
clerkship almost at once. After 
that I saw him but once a week, 
Saturday afternoons. He was 
only twenty-one then, but he 
looked much older, and gray 
threads were beginning to show 

33 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



in his dark hair. I learned to 
watch the hands of the office 
clock for the hour that heralded 
his coming, sure that the door 
would open almost on the minute, 
and his serious face, lighted for 
the moment with the joy of seeing 
me, would look in. Close upon 
that expression always followed 
that other, inquiry and suspense. 
Had I heard anything — of her? 
And always I had to shake my 
head, looking hopeful, however, 
not to discourage the boy too 
much. I was doing what I could 
to assist in the search for his sake, 
but I was not sure it was best 
that he should find her. 

The time of which I write is 

34 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



now back years in the past, and 
the pattern of the weaving from 
the loom of life is before me, its 
strength and worth to be judged 
by the Great Inspector. Yet as 
I turn the pattern now, I marvel 
at its strength and evenness, for 
here I know the knots were 
hastily made and gave way, there 
the thread snapped, and that 
pulled corner was where the 
workman looked away from the 
shuttle in the weaving. But the 
troublous stitches fade more and 
more as I look at the pattern. 

I have already told you that 
the shoemaker was a hideous 
misfit in life in everything except 
the making of shoes. It was 

35 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



plain, therefore, he must make 
shoes. His whole existence, air, 
food, light, prayer itself for him, 
must be through shoe leather; in 
this alone could he express worth- 
iness. So Joe drew his boyhood 
savings from the bank and moved 
the family into a better home with 
a clean little shop for his father, 
in a better part of the city. Into 
the shop he put good tools and 
enough good leather to save half 
a dozen drunkards' souls. Then 
he put his father down on the 
bench and talked to him as one 
man to another. He told him 
what he was in no uncertain 
terms, and with a bitterness of 
truth that admitted no dispute. 

36 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



He showed him what he might 
be. He gave him his chance, as 
far as he, the son, was concerned. 
And when the revelations were 
finished the shoemaker was — 
afraid. 

This is not a story of miracles, 
but of facts, and Martin Buest 
continued to drink. But through 
an ever growing fear and respect 
for his son, and because of the 
good shoe leather, the intervals 
between his total lapses grew 
longer, and as the Demon with 
the Red Eyes retreated step by 
step, we hastily seized the vantage 
ground and planted our victorious 
banners in the name of Shoes! 
Shoes, shoes, shoes! They filled 

37 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



his days and haunted his dreams; 
they pursued his moments of 
weakness and perched around 
him in rows like black birds of 
ill omen when he fell. I, myself, 
had a pair a month while trade 
was picking up and bound him 
to finish them in half the time 
it required. The first customers 
were of our finding and they 
drove him with whip and spur. 
And then school children began 
to troop in for repairs, assuring 
him, with truth, that school must 
wait on those shoes. Talk about 
your gospel of salvation through 
fasting and prayer! The gospel 
that drove Martin Buest, hard- 
ened sinner that he was, with a 

38 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



flaming sword, was the universal 
gospel of work, — hard work, 
more work always than he could 
do! And because he was a born 
workman, and shoemaking with 
him was an art, he did it and was 
saved. 

The boys, Joe's brothers, were 
as great a problem in their way, 
for they had the strength and un- 
satiated appetites of youth with- 
out the balance either of inherent 
morality or education. Two were 
working in a foundry and another 
in a plumber's shop, where they 
were fairly faithful. But what- 
ever of dissipation they gave their 
nights to, there was one night in 
the week when they took pains to 

39 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



be sober and self-respecting citi- 
zens, and that was Saturday night, 
when Joe was in town. One by 
one, however, as they came eight- 
een, under our pressure they 
were rounded into the Institute i 
where the contact with better 
men, and our night classes, 
helped them up the ladder and 
made of them respectable young 
workingmen. 

And with things growing a little 
easierat my end of the line, Joe was 
searching up and down the earth 
for his sister. It was about this 
time that in response to a great 
need we had let down the bars 
and admitted women into our 
Institute, with educational and 

40 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



vocational classes for them, dress- 
making, millinery, cooking and 
the like; the social evenings, too, 
were very popular from the 
first. On a night when Joe would 
chance to be off his run he would 
sit in the corner looking moodily 
at the dancing or whatever it 
might happen to be, and I knew 
the thoughts in his mind as well 
as if he had spoken them aloud. 
If this had but been in time, it 
might have saved his little sister! 
If she could but have had the 
protection and privileges of such 
a place before her untried feet 
had wandered into the treacher- 
ous paths! The pity of it, — O 
God, the tragedy of it, — that it 

41 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



had come too late for her! But 
I knew, too, that though the past 
was bitter, his heart was tender, 
and in her memory he was using 
his influence for the work we 
were doing and giving liberally 
of his money to aid our growing 
needs. 

But if he was thinking only of 
his sister, there was many a bright 
eye there that looked with inter- 
est on him, and I couldn't help 
wishing he would fancy one of 
our fine girls and marry. There 
was one in particular, Mary 
Lowe, to whom I introduced him 
with that very hope in my heart. 
Mary was as uncommon as the 
Kohinoor diamond, and, like it, 

42 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



she needed no setting; she was 
enough in herself. I could im- 
agine her Joe's wife in a four- 
room cottage, doing his mending 
and getting the meals, or gracing 
a Back Bay mansion, with Joe a 
millionaire; the setting made no 
difference. She would always be 
just Mary. 

Nobody ever thought to in- 
quire who she was. She carried 
her passports with her, in looks 
and gentle sweetness and intelli- 
gence. More than once I had 
seen her soft dark eyes turned in 
Joe's direction, though modestly 
withdrawn the next moment, and 
it seemed like love at first sight 
with both of them. But Joe 

43 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



fought the thing stubbornly, and 
Mary's manner was often pained 
and hurt, though she bore it 
bravely. 

I took Joe to task for his aloof- 
ness. He was quiet for a while 
under it and then broke out: 

"Don't you suppose I know 
the girl loves me? And I love 
her, God help me! But I can't 
ask any girl to marry me till I 
know certainly that other one is 
not suffering in shame and want. 
I must find her or know that she 
is dead before I offer any other 
woman protection and a home." 

So that was it! Knowing him 
even as well as I did, I had not 

44 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



plumbed the nobility of his soul 
to its depths. 

^r *w* **F *rr *rf 

And then one day he found 
her and the suspense and sorrow 
were ended. He heard of her 
way out on the Pacific Coast where 
she had been thrown on the town 
from a house of ill repute, friend- 
less, alone and ready to die. 
With her hands in his she sobbed 
out the story: 

"Oh Joey, it's so good of you 
not to hate me! He left me and 
I couldn't go back. I couldn't 
have got work, and father and 
mother would have been so ter- 
rible, you can see how it was, — 

45 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



and things went so badly with 
me — I suffered so. Don't leave 
me, Joey, will you? Perhaps 
you'll take me home with you 
and they'll forgive me — even 
now." 

He brought her home (though 
the doctors said she might die on 
the way) to the chastened mother, 
and through the force of his will 
alone, I believe, she lived, and in 
the end found happiness and 
peace. 

On the list of the Board of 
Management of the Wells Mem- 
orial Institute, which is counted 
a mighty regenerative force in 
the problems of men's affairs and 

46 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



was "bequeathed to Boston by 
those who had faith in God and 
so in men," we read two names 
with pride. They are those of 
Joseph Buest and his wife, who 
was Mary Lowe. 

And in the large measure of 
their prosperity, they labor to 
help others. 

Note. — The author of this sketch has taken facts 
and made of them a composite story, with such 
license as may be allowed a story writer. 

Bishop Phillips Brooks, Boston' 's loved 
divine^ said; 

"The battle that is to be fought out in 

Wells Memorial the Master made plain to 

us when He bade us think of those things 

that are to be cultivated here ; when He 

47 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



bade us remember that in sobriety, intelli- 
gence, industry, skill and thrift there lay 
the great salvation of the workingman ; 
when He told us the enemies of the work- 
ingman were intemperance, unskillfulness, 
the willingness to do things in a poor, 
meager, shambling way instead of doing 
them in the best and finest way in which 
they can be done. 

"There is another enemy that strikes at 
the vitals of the workingman : the dark 
brooding care, the absence of cheerfulness, 
the fastening on their minds of discontent. 
Against this enemy this Club, too, sets its 
face. 

"We believe that God will raise up 

MEN TO DO THE WORK, BECAUSE He HAS 
CALLED MEN AND SET THEM INTO THE FRONT 
OF THIS WORK WHICH IS MIGHTY AGAINST 
THE MULTITUDINOUS VICES OF THE CITY. 

"We are thankful that there was in our 
time faith and hope enough in men and in 
God to start an institution such as this." 
48 



A MAN MINE EQUAL 



To the Reader; 

We are sendi7ig you this little story be- 
lieving that you will feel the ring of its 
truths and realize anew the necessity of 
such a work as ours in this city of Boston 
as well as the ever urgent necessity of 
money to carry it on. Will you express 
your sympathy in a way that will encour- 
age us as we labor, enlarge the work or 
perpetuate it for the future, as your 
privileges and sympathies may suggest? 
Checks may be made out to — Superin- 
tendent, Wells Memorial Institute — nine 
ktmdred eighty-five Washington Street, 
Boston, Massachusetts. 



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APR 7 1913 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

1 1 in in nun mi 

027 279 913 



